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This is one example of legislation that mandates fantasy tech that doesn't exist. You'd think that something as simple as speed limiter should be very easy to implement, and it couldn't be further from the truth - watch any review of a car with this tech and every reviewer will complain that it's not the presence of the system that's the problem, it's the fact that it constantly gets the speed limit wrong. Either reading the wrong signs(from parallel streets or signs which have been vandalized and moved facing the wrong way, or literally just reading the speed incorrectly) or getting the GPS speed wrong, or when on a private road defaulting to 20mph so beeping at you when driving in your own driveway.

Generally personally I actually think this is a potentially good thing - but the implementation is universally flawed, across every brand, every model. Now the selling point is whether the car has a shortcut button on the dash to disable this system.

Agreed that the general case is hard to solve.

I think you could at least make a case for solving a simpler problem. What's the highest legal speed limit in the country in which the car was sold? Set a global speed limit to that.

> This is one example of legislation that mandates fantasy tech that doesn't exist.

If the goal is to increase the minimal cost of any vehicle which drives on a road then the worse the legislation is, the better it serves the purpose. Incumbents gain a lot by obstructing any newcomer from capturing market share.

Also, if cars are moving towards the direction of driving themselves, it goes without saying that an accurate speed limit will be one of the first functionalities to implement.

Given that cars 95% of the time are not moving anywhere, then self driving cars could reduce the car consumption by 10 times, an order of magnitude less. Car ownership is one of the biggest financial bubbles out there. By limiting access to newcomers, which will implement self-driving, they keep the bubble going.

See also, tariffs to BYD, from USA and Europe. Imagine people using BYD (or another car) and installing custom software, open source, auditable and extensible. As soon as a good combination of sensors and software is implemented which drives itself, then anyone can download and install it to his own car. Then the bubble will pop, and politicians will have failed to their mission.

If we can’t even reliably know what the speed limit is, how can we even be close to self driving cars?

Not only is it a way simpler problem, but it’s actually a requirement for self driving also.

I did a drive test about two weeks or so ago with two new cars, 2023 models. They beeped every time the speed was about, I think, more than 10kph more than the TSR system read. At first I had no idea why the car was beeping for no reason.

So I had to find a place to stop, go into car settings - which annoyingly enough are disabled while the car is not in Park, and disable features until I found the TSR option, disabled it, car stopped beeping.

I have a couple of issues with this: - my current car has TSR and I use it to remember what the speed limit was on a road segment. Quite handy if you miss the speed limit change sign. As a workaround I could use Waze/Google Maps with CarPlay to tell me what the speed limit is, but it is an extra hoop I have to jump through - beeping is annoying, but it only beeps for a second or two, so I guess with time you just tune it out - reducing the speed to match the posted speed limit is beyond madness. Most roads haven't had signs changed in decades when cars would brake in a longer distance, no ABS or any other electronic assistance systems were available. Any car from the past 20 years or so can drive safely at greater speeds and stop in a very short distance. - not all signs are properly recognized, like no overtake zones and so on. Not to mention cases where the overtake zone finishes there are no signs indicating that. Same goes for lane keeping assist where temporary markings make the car wobble because it confuses the system and thinks you're driving between the lanes.

I actually quite like it. There’s obviously a few quirks, and it works heaps and bounds better when you’re driving in the country where the system was designed (Germany vs Denmark in my case).

My main issue is when speed limits are reduced but for some reason the car is not getting the update. Copenhagen reduced a huge number of big arteries from 60 km/h to 50 km/h, but over two years later, my car still applies the old value.

I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t even be able to contest this in court.

In mere existence terms... It exists, my cars almost detect correctly all speed limits it see around, almost because sometimes it detect wrong one or for a wrong road tract (like a temporary limit due to some road works, kept after that just because there is a missing end sign), but in mandatory (present and on by default) means that we will get wrong actions, as per phantom breaks (I got three in three last days, for instance, in one case exaggerated and too hard, the other two for not valid reasons though not hard).

That's aside the mere fact we should been able to ignore speed limits under specific circumstances that's are typically emergencies so we do not have time to dig in the vehicle tablet menu to deactivate some ADAS...

It was exactly the same when incandescent light bulbs were banned. The alternatives weren't as good and almost no improvements were made. After the ban it took like 5-10 years, but suddenly there was progress. By now even halogen lamps are gone, because LED became so much better.

And in the end it's not the fault of the legislation. If it wouldn't be so common to go above the limit there wouldn't have been any need to a beeping device. Just look at those idiots still arguing about their tachometer being 10% off, always, and therefore thinking it's fine to always go 5-10 km/h above the limit, never below.

Smart(er) roads. A lot of this stuff becomes simpler if there is complementary tech on infrastructure. Instead of relying on reading 20th century tech (signs).
This is terrifying. I routinely cross a bridge with a 30ton weight limit, which my car mistakes for a 30km/h speed limit sign. I would cause an average of 2 accidents per month if I suddenly slowed from 70 to 30 and the people behind me weren't paying attention.

The technology is _not_ there and this won't save lives, potentially it will cause deaths.

(Yes I read the article, this is initially only "for the driver's information" and not (yet) a hard limit.... but it's the first step in a very wrong direction)

>There will be four ways in which ISA systems will work to slow the vehicle down, and it will be up to the manufacturers to pick which one they want to use. The EU regulations permit a system that can use a cascaded acoustic warning, a cascaded vibrating warning, an accelerator pedal with haptic feedback, or a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced.

Haptic feedback isn't gonna kill anyone anytime soon.

Leaving aside the myriad political & economic implications of this, my VW's navigation quite frequently thinks I'm on a different road, or it misses a speed limit sign, etc. It's bad enough when it jerks the wheel a little because it got confused by an off-ramp, or slams on the brakes in the parking lot because someone is walking a mere 30 yards behind me, but boy if my car started dropping speed to 35 because it confused the freeway with the frontage road I'd be pretty mad.
>There will be four ways in which ISA systems will work to slow the vehicle down, and it will be up to the manufacturers to pick which one they want to use. The EU regulations permit a system that can use a cascaded acoustic warning, a cascaded vibrating warning, an accelerator pedal with haptic feedback, or a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced.

This is more like a "speed warner" than a "speed limiter".

Leaving aside the concerns about the tech not working well, I'm really not a fan of this pre-crime stuff. This feels very Big Brother, where someone (or some system) is watching over you so you don't break any laws.

Things like this lead to cultural ossification and are a nightmare scenario for me.

The problem with automated enforcement of laws like this, is that the laws were not written for 100% automatic enforcement.

Everyone who has ever followed a car driving 5 mph below the speed limit on a two-lane road knows that it is basically impossible to ever pass them while staying under the speed limit. Legally, that's what you're supposed to do, but everyone - the police, the legislators, the courts, and drivers - understands that in practice it's acceptable to exceed the speed limit a bit when making a pass.

This is just one of countless areas in which the law is not actually written with the expectation of being enforced 100% of the time.

I am going to hold on to my 2013 car for as long as possible. Fuck this future where everything “““needs””” to spy on me and everywhere I go.
Seems misleading for the headline to call this a "speed limiter", since depending on the implementation it either doesn't affect the car's speed at all, or slows it down in an immediately overrideable way. So there is no actual limit on the car's speed.
Hacker News: This is absurd! The tech doesn't exist!

Reality: It's existed for years, and has already been successfully tested in pilots https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/027-23/mayor-ad...

Sometimes you should try looking at the real world instead of trying to assume from first principles.

Bit funny how the article states that the systems are unobtrusive as to be essentially useless, which ignores the fact that these systems are defanged to appease entitled speeders.

Governments around the world impose various requirements on vehicle speeds, most notably ebikes being capped at 20mph for "safety reasons". Meanwhile private cars can travel at over 100mph for no apparent reason other than to not upset drivers at the expense of everyone else on the road.

Hopefully the EU's right to repair allows consumers to fix their cars by removing this malware.
A number of years back I had a rental car (in Arizona possibly) that had a speed limiter that was at the speed limit--or just above--as I recall and it was incredibly annoying.
Well this is going to be interesting if they rely on GPS. Possibly due to gps jamming by our neighbour country i have had to disable the feature where the car tries to predict the road ahead and suddenly brakes on the motorway because it thinks it is on a side road 10s of kilometers away.
This law makes an intelligent speed limiter mandatory to be present in a car, but it does not currently require it to be activated. The software for road sign recognition is currently of poor quality, making a mandatory system impractical.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=PI_...

Or, just add speed bumps, curves, narrowings in the road, etc, to naturally bring the speed down. Then it works on everyone, whether they have the nanny tech or not, and you avoid the difficult problem of determining the speed limit accurately 100% of the time across every segment of road everywhere.

This is kind of like the (apocryphal) "NASA spent millions on a pen that would work without gravity; russians just used pencil" parable.

It seems understood that people typically go about 5-10 MPH over the limit. I assume that speed limits are set with the knowledge that this is common. If technology like this becomes widespread and results in the actual speeds more closely matching the posted limits, will the speed limits eventually be increased, since it was always understood that people could safely drive a bit faster than the old posted speeds?

Secondly, I remember hearing that some car companies calibrate their speedometers to be a bit conservative (reporting a higher speed than is actually being driven), in part so they aren't sued by customers who get tickets. If different cars show different speeds, what will this do to the flow of traffic? Will everyone end up going as slow as the most heavily down-calibrated vehicles?

This system is already in use for lorries, which are hard limited (like the last option described in TFA — engine loses power if driver attepts to accelerate beyond the limit). It's an absolute hell for other users of the road, because they're hard limited to 100 km/h, even on roads where the legal limit is higher. Now the problem is, no two vehicles have exactly the same limit, it varies a noticeable amount, so inevitably one lorry driver will attempt to overtake another one — with speed difference below 1 km/h, at about 100 km/h where legal limit is 140 km/h. It takes about 2 min and usually causes 2-3 km "jams" on motorways.
Is there actual data that these make driving safe?
I’d hate for this to become mandatory but at the same time you’ll pry my Ford’s slightly intelligent speed limiter from my cold dead hands. If this change in law means that somehow cars become better at reading speed limit signs (radio signals on roads or sth? maintained by the people who put up the signs? no idea but this gives it a mandate), then I’m only going to love it more.

Though if they make it obligatory to turn on and/or annoying, i’m going to be angry. That shit is going to only make Audi drivers more frustrated than they already are.

This might be effective if all existing cars on the road were somehow retrofitted with speed limiters. But what we'll see instead is an even more dangerous combination of people in older cars (the majority of cars) speeding while people in newer cars are causing a dangerous speed differential in the flow of traffic. Not to mention the economic impact this could have on on new car sales when people decide en masse that they'll just hold onto their old cars without limits for longer.
Next step: frustrated by variances between acutal and reckoned speed limits, consumers demand the limit is returned by an authoritative government API. Of course, authentication will be required to prevent abuse

Next next step: speed API uses social credit score as an input and imposes lower limit for those disfavored by credit system

"The objective is to protect Europeans against traffic accidents, poor air quality and climate change, empower them with new mobility solutions that match their changing needs, and defend the competitiveness of European industry,"

Do speed limiters, as proposed, meaningfully contribute to achieving those objectives?

At about 1.4 million annually, and roughly half are people not in cars, it's only surprising cars and speeds are not more closely regulated. Instead, vehicle makers are allowed to raise the hood line on trucks because it's macho. Which causes more death and worse injury.
> There will be four ways in which ISA systems will work to slow the vehicle down, and it will be up to the manufacturers to pick which one they want to use. The EU regulations permit a system that can use a cascaded acoustic warning, a cascaded vibrating warning, an accelerator pedal with haptic feedback, or a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced.

> "Even in the case of speed control function, where the car speed will be automatically gently reduced, the system can be smoothly overridden by the driver by pressing the accelerator pedal a little bit deeper," the European Commission adds.

So not speed limiters, but speed warners. Still, given that ebikes and escooters have been limited by legislation to 20-25mph, it only made sense to do the same for the much more obviously dangerous vehicles on the road. I hope we can do the same in the US, or at least make your car annoy you when you speed the way it annoys you when you don't have your seatbelt on.

2024 must be the year of the speed limits (cue: Year of the <animal> in Chinese calendar), or something is in the waters. Right now, in the UK, there's an enthusiastic drive to convert roads to 20mph. And now this, from the EU.
Please oh please add them to German cars sold to USA too. I would really enjoy watching all the BMWs and Mercedes going the speed limit all the time instead of flying past me with plate obscuring devices and never seeing any consequences
Our accursed state senator Wiener is trying to bring the same thing to California.
Normally I am a big fan of the EU but this is crap legislation. If you want to stop speeding, just do what France is doing: Frequent speed cameras and high fines. It is very rare to encounter somebody speeding there.
I'm curious what the Venn diagram of folks who think this is a hard problem and folks who thing self driving is doable looks like.
Rules like this m, mandated by unelected officials are one of the reasons millions of people in the UK voted for Brexit.
I swear i remember my old TomTom device having something like this built in but maybe im remembering wrong.
Eww it is not the car's job to enforce speed limits. More nanny state nonsense.
Honestly, I think it makes more sense to start with limiting cars somewhere around 90-110MPH; IE, the fastest that anyone would ever drive on a public road.

Where I live, speed limits are routinely set artificially low due to a cultural belief that rules are meant to be broken. IE, if the safest speed is 75MPH, then the speed limit is set to 55MPH because everyone will break the rule. If the limit was really 75MPH, then everyone would drive faster.

I do think we need frank discussions about what is a safe speed to drive, and the general public's tolerance for risk, before "speed limit aware" limiters are commonplace. Otherwise, these just smell like a scheme from an "enthusiastic rule follower" to try force unneeded rules when these rules don't need to exist.

We're driving a Tesla Model 3 refresh 2024, and it has the speed nag at every start up. It also has a lot of wrong speeds for portions of roads around our place.

Sometimes it's temporary speed limits that were set during road construction and then never went away, sometimes it doesn't understand that you left a type of road and went onto another one with a different default speed limit, it's pretty infuriating.

And that's a car that has cameras all around, onboard image analysis software and permanent internet connection. I can't imagine how that'd even work in cars with less capabilities.

About time. Why have rules for cars if they can’t be enforced
Seems like a net positive change to me, assuming the tech doesn't succumb to some of the FUD takes here (and/or can be improved over time...).

I've had family killed by speeders. I've had friends and family permanently maimed and disabled by speeders. For people who think speed limits are just a suggestion or don't always apply, I can see how this would be "annoying". But the point of speed limits are for driving safety -- something humans are notably absolutely terrible at as a species. Anything that enforces them a bit better than the limited (and tbh flawed) resource of just traffic stops is an improvement in my book.

[dupe]

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40880764

> Starting in 2022 all newly introduced car models in the EU have had Intelligent Speed Assist (ISA) installed, but now all new vehicles must feature them.

Huh? What’s the difference between “installed” and “featured“ here?